Come on, get baking, I know you want one of these

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(Source: All photos taken by me while baking)

I thought of writing this post after reading an inspiring bread-making post by @riverflows. It took me a while to get to it but here it finally is. It is directed at bread lovers all over the world, especially those looking for better versions with fewer ingredients and no nasty additives.

And it may also appeal to some Swiss expats in Australia and elsewhere who may have just gotten a little homesick looking at that picture.

This bread is called Zopf. It's a traditional Swiss Sunday breakfast treat that I always loved, so I took to making it myself after moving to Australia. Most original recipes would have a ton of additional ingredients in it such as butter, sugar, milk and perhaps some kind of dough improver. I cut these out to make it healthier and found that it tastes just as good without (surprise, surprise).

This one was made with regular baker's flour and I do think it works best with white flour. Inspired by @riverflows, I plan to try a bio-dynamic version but have so far only found a wholegrain variety. Will keep looking. If anyone tries it with different kinds of flour, please share your results in the comments.

Don't worry if you're vegan, you can still have it

Luckily, the process of omitting ingredients made the recipe (almost) suitable for vegans. The only thing that is not is the egg yolk wash on top. I'm not a vegan so I am using it because for me it's part of the taste experience and it also looks nice. I can't quite imagine a Zopf without it.

But I do want to cater for vegans so I looked up vegan egg wash, and apparently, a mixture of non-dairy milk and agave syrup works quite well. I don't have agave syrup in my pantry but might buy some sometime and give it a go. Please reveal your secret eggwash-substitution solutions if you have any.

Ok, so what are the 5 ingredients?

This might be hard to believe but here we go:

300ml (a little more than 10oz) Water
600g (4 cups, 21.4oz) Flour
1 1/2 tsp Salt (I use pink Himalayan salt but any will do)
1 1/2 tsp Dry yeast (or fresh if you have)
1 egg yolk (or alternative)

That's it, I swear! Some people say you need sugar to aid the yeast to make it rise. In my experience this in not necessary, but if yours doesn't rise properly, adding a bit of sugar might help.

Making the dough

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Here I have to make a confession. I once got a breadmaker for Christmas and got lazy. I'm now letting the machine do the kneading for me. But I promise it turns out just as yummy if you do that part yourself. So if you do have a bread machine, just put all ingredients (minus the egg) in and put the setting to dough (without baking).

If you do it by hand, follow these steps:

• mix flour and salt in a bowl and make a well in the middle
• mix the yeast with a little water and put in the well
• add the rest of the water into the well, slowly combine
• knead into a smooth, elastic ball (about 10 minutes)
• if too sticky add a little more flour (or a little more water if too dry)

After that leave it covered in the bowl (temperature should be rather warm) for about an hour, then knock it down and leave for another little bit. There are lots of bread dough making recipes on the internet. Try another method if this doesn't work for you.

Shaping it is also easier than it looks

First of all, divide the dough in three equal parts. This reminds me of a hilarious old comedy sketch in German that made fun of that sentence in a German dialect that made all the words sound similar: "Dann teilen wir den Teig in drei gleiche Teile". It still makes me laugh, haha. Unfortunately, I can't find a video of that right now.

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Then make three sausages. You can roll them between your hands or just squeeze or pull them down. It doesn't matter how you make them as long as we end up with three fairly equal ones. You can make them thinner and longer if you prefer narrower, longer Zopf, or leave them thicker for a chubbier one.

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Now put the right and left top ends next to each other, flatten out the end of the middle one and put that over the other two. Press the three ends together a bit so they stay that way (mine came apart a little while baking).

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Now to the actual shaping. Once you get the concept of this, it really only takes a minute to do. Ok, so first grab the roll on the right (or start on the left if you prefer) and place it across the middle roll, so that the right (or left) roll is now in the middle...

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Now grab the one on the other side and pull it across to make that the middle one...

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And so forth, left, right, left, right. Just keep going until you get to the end, then stick the three ends under a bit so they hold. It should look about like this now:

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This is probably a good time to preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius (about 350 degrees Fahrenheit)!

Now let's add a beautiful finish

Separate one egg and slush the yolk all over the whole Zopf (or use your preferred alternative egg wash). I suppose the whole egg would work too but it's too much for this size bread. I prefer to use the egg white to make some yummy banana pancakes, another super simple recipe (you literally mix egg and banana ONLY, and they cook perfectly and taste delish).

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You can get that eggwash (or alternative) on whichever way you wish. I use my fingers because it works best to distribute it to every square millimetre and I like the sensation of doing it (sorry if that's weird, haha, but you should try it if you haven't).

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Of course, I wash my hands before I do this, but even so, I didn't take a picture of the action because it might gross out the clean and neat cooks amongst us. I suppose most people will do this with a brush, I just want to make it clear that it's totally fine to use fingers if you don't have a brush, haha.

After that step it looks beautiful already, don't you think?

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Almost there!!

Put the tray in the oven so the Zopf sits about in the middle of it. Bake for 30-45 minutes, depending on your oven and your preference of colour and crunchiness. I'm putting another pic of the final product in so you don't have to scroll all the way up again. So this is what you can expect after the 30 minutes are up:

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I know it's hard to resists when it comes out of the oven but do let it cool a bit, then cut slices or pull pieces off and add whatever spread you fancy (it tastes divine with strawberry jam, or any other jam for that matter).

Enjoy and remember: sharing makes it even better!
Peace be with you,
Yvonne

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And as always, I acknowledge @welcomewagon and @dreemsteem for giving me a warm and fuzzy welcome and extremely helpful guidance when I first started out on steemit. They do a phenomenal job! Please support them and their newbies in any way you can.